Network Working Group C. Newman
Internet-Draft Sun Microsystems
Expires: September 20, 2004 March 22, 2004
Message Submission BURL Extension
draft-newman-lemonade-burl-00.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
The submission profile of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
provides a standard way for an email client to submit a complete
message for delivery. This specification extends the submission
profile by adding a new BURL command which can be used to fetch
submission data from an Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)
server. This permits a mail client to inject content from an IMAP
server into the SMTP infrastructure without downloading it to the
client and uploading it back to the server.
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Table of Contents
1. Conventions Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. BURL Submission Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 SMTP Submission Extension Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2 BURL Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3 The BURL IMAP Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.4 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.5 Formal Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. 8-bit and Binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Document History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7.1 Changes from -01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7.2 Changes from -00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 10
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1. Conventions Used in this Document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY"
in this document are to be interpreted as defined in "Key words for
use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" [2].
The formal syntax use the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) [4]
notation including the core rules defined in Appendix A of RFC 2234.
2. Introduction
This specification defines an extension to the standard Message
Submission [6] protocol to permit data to be fetched from an IMAP
server at message submission time. This MAY be used in conjuction
with the CHUNKING [10] mechanism so that chunks of the message can
come from an external IMAP server. This provides the ability to
forward an email message without first downloading it to the client.
3. BURL Submission Extension
This section defines the BURL submission extension.
3.1 SMTP Submission Extension Registration
1. The name of this submission extension is "BURL". This extends
the Message Submission protocol on port 587 and MUST NOT be
advertised by a regular SMTP [8] server on port 25. Compliant
submission clients MUST attempt to use port 587 prior to falling
back to port 25, unless explicitly configured to do otherwise by
the user.
2. The EHLO keyword value associated with the extension is "BURL".
3. The BURL EHLO keyword will have zero or more arguments. The only
argument defined at this time is the "imap" argument, which MUST
be present in order to use IMAP URLs with BURL. Clients MUST
ignore other arguments after the BURL EHLO keyword unless they
are defined by a subsequent IETF standards track specification.
The arguments which appear after the BURL EHLO keyword may change
subsequent to the use of SMTP AUTH [7], so a server which
advertises BURL with no arguments prior to authentication
indicates that BURL is supported but authentication is required
to use it.
4. This extension adds the BURL SMTP verb. This verb is used as a
replacement for the DATA command and is only permitted during a
mail transaction after at least one successful recipient.
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3.2 BURL Transaction
When a BURL-aware client connects to a submit server with the BURL
extension, it will first authenticate (using SMTP AUTH and perhaps
STARTTLS), and then can submit any number of messages with full
interoperability with important SMTP extensions such as delivery
status notifications [17].
A simple BURL transaction will consist of MAIL FROM, one or more RCPT
TO headers and a BURL command with the "LAST" tag. The BURL command
will include an IMAP URL pointing to a fully formed message ready for
injection into the SMTP infrastructure. If PIPELINING [9] is
advertised, the client MAY send the entire transaction in one round
trip. If no valid RCPT TO address is supplied, the BURL command will
simply fail and no resolution of BURL arguments will be performed.
If at least one valid RCPT TO address is supplied, then the BURL
argument will be resolved before the server responds to the command.
A more sophisticated BURL transaction occurs when the server also
advertises CHUNKING [10]. In this case, the BURL and BDAT commands
may be interleaved until one of them terminates the transaction with
the "LAST" argument. If PIPELINING [9] is also advertise, then the
client may pipeline the entire transaction in one round-trip.
However, it MUST wait for the results of the "LAST" BDAT or BURL
command prior to initiating a new transaction.
The BURL command directs the server to fetch the data object to which
the URL refers and include it in the message. If the URL fetch
fails, the server will fail the entire transaction.
3.3 The BURL IMAP Option
When "imap" is present in the space-separated list of arguments
following the BURL EHLO keyword, that indicates the BURL command
supports IMAP URLs [3] with the URLAUTH [13] extended form.
Subsequent to a successful SMTP AUTH command, the submission server
MAY indicate a pre-arranged trust relationship with a specific IMAP
server by including a BURL EHLO keyword argument of the form "imap://
imap.example.com". In this case, the submission server will permit a
regular IMAP URL to mailboxes on imap.example.com which the user who
authenticated to the submit server can access.
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3.4 Examples
In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and
server respectively. If a single "C:" or "S:" label applies to
multiple lines, then the line breaks between those lines are for
editorial clarity only and are not part of the actual protocol
exchange.
Two successful submissions (without and with pipelining) follow:
<SSL/TLS encryption layer negotiated>
C: EHLO potter.example.com
S: 250-owlry.example.com
S: 250-8BITMIME
S: 250-BURL imap
S: 250-AUTH PLAIN
S: 250-DSN
S: 250 ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
C: AUTH PLAIN aGFycnkAaGFycnkAYWNjaW8=
S: 235 2.7.0 PLAIN authentication successful.
C: MAIL FROM:<harry@gryffindor.example.com>
S: 250 2.5.0 Address Ok.
C: RCPT TO:<ron@gryffindor.example.com>
S: 250 2.1.5 ron@gryffindor.example.com OK.
C: BURL imap://harry@gryffindor.example.com/outbox
;uidvalidity=1078863300/;uid=25;urlauth=submit+harry
:internal:91354a473744909de610943775f92038 LAST
S: 250 2.5.0 Ok.
<SSL/TLS encryption layer negotiated>
C: EHLO potter.example.com
S: 250-owlry.example.com
S: 250-8BITMIME
S: 250-PIPELINING
S: 250-BURL imap
S: 250-AUTH PLAIN
S: 250-DSN
S: 250 ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
C: AUTH PLAIN aGFycnkAaGFycnkAYWNjaW8=
C: MAIL FROM:<harry@gryffindor.example.com>
C: RCPT TO:<ron@gryffindor.example.com>
C: BURL imap://harry@gryffindor.example.com/outbox
;uidvalidity=1078863300/;uid=25;urlauth=submit+harry
:internal:91354a473744909de610943775f92038 LAST
S: 235 2.7.0 PLAIN authentication successful.
S: 250 2.5.0 Address Ok.
S: 250 2.1.5 ron@gryffindor.example.com OK.
S: 250 2.5.0 Ok.
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Some example failure cases:
C: MAIL FROM:<harry@gryffindor.example.com>
C: RCPT TO:<malfoy@slitherin.example.com>
C: BURL imap://harry@gryffindor.example.com/outbox
;uidvalidity=1078863300/;uid=25;urlauth=submit+harry
:internal:91354a473744909de610943775f92038 LAST
S: 250 2.5.0 Address Ok.
S: 550 5.7.1 Relaying not allowed: malfoy@slitherin.example.com
S: 554 5.5.0 No recipients have been specified.
C: MAIL FROM:<harry@gryffindor.example.com>
C: RCPT TO:<ron@gryffindor.example.com>
C: BURL imap://harry@gryffindor.example.com/outbox
;uidvalidity=1078863300/;uid=25;urlauth=submit+harry
:internal:71354a473744909de610943775f92038 LAST
S: 250 2.5.0 Address Ok.
S: 250 2.1.5 ron@gryffindor.example.com OK.
S: 554 5.7.0 IMAP URL authorization failed
3.5 Formal Syntax
The following syntax specification inherits ABNF [4] and Uniform
Resource Identifiers [5].
burl-param = "imap" / ("imap://" authority)
; parameter to BURL EHLO keyword
burl-cmd = "BURL" SP absoluteURI [SP end-marker] CRLF
end-marker = "LAST"
4. 8-bit and Binary
The BURL server MUST advertise 8BITMIME [1] and perform the
downconversion described in that specification on the resulting
complete message if 8-bit data is received with the BURL command and
passed to a 7-bit server. If the URL argument to BURL refers to
binary data, then the submit server MAY refuse the command or
downconvert as described in Binary SMTP [10].
The Submit server MAY refuse to accept a BURL command or combination
of BURL and BDAT commands which result in unencoded 8-bit data in
mail or MIME [16] headers.
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5. IANA Considerations
When this is published as an RFC, the "BURL" SMTP extension as
described in Section 3 will be registered. This registration will be
marked as for use by message submission [6] only in the registry.
6. Security Considerations
A separate specification discussing security details of this proposal
and counter-proposals is forthcoming.
Implementations which support the URLAUTH [13] form of IMAP URLs
SHOULD implement both the SMTP STARTTLS [11] and the IMAP STARTTLS
[12] extensions and MUST have a configuration setting which requires
their use with such IMAP URLs.
When a client uses SMTP STARTTLS to send a BURL command which
references non-public information, the message submission server MUST
use STARTTLS or a mechanism providing equivalent data privacy when
resolving that URL.
7. Document History
7.1 Changes from -01
o Removed the conversion argument to BURL to simplify.
o Replace the conversion section with the simpler 8-bit and Binary
section.
o Removed the failhow argument to simplify and eliminate
race-condition which bothered people.
o Simplify specification to eliminate "composition" model and just
focus on BURL command.
o Make it clear that BURL can be used without the chunking
extension.
7.2 Changes from -00
o Added the end-marker "LAST", so this could be used without BDAT
and works with a pre-composed message.
o Changed "Message Composition" to "Message Submission with
Composition" in several places.
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o Correct Spelling Errors
Normative References
[1] Klensin, J., Freed, N., Rose, M., Stefferud, E. and D. Crocker,
"SMTP Service Extension for 8bit-MIMEtransport", RFC 1652, July
1994.
[2] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[3] Newman, C., "IMAP URL Scheme", RFC 2192, September 1997.
[4] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.
[5] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August
1998.
[6] Gellens, R. and J. Klensin, "Message Submission", RFC 2476,
December 1998.
[7] Myers, J., "SMTP Service Extension for Authentication", RFC
2554, March 1999.
[8] Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821, April
2001.
[9] Freed, N., "SMTP Service Extension for Command Pipelining", STD
60, RFC 2920, September 2000.
[10] Vaudreuil, G., "SMTP Service Extensions for Transmission of
Large and Binary MIME Messages", RFC 3030, December 2000.
[11] Hoffman, P., "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over
Transport Layer Security", RFC 3207, February 2002.
[12] Crispin, M., "INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION
4rev1", RFC 3501, March 2003.
[13] Crispin, M. and C. Newman, "Internet Message Access Protocol
(IMAP) - URLAUTH Extension", draft-crispin-imap-urlauth-06
(work in progress), January 2004.
Informative References
[14] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", STD 10, RFC 821,
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August 1982.
[15] Freed, N., "SMTP Service Extension for Returning Enhanced Error
Codes", RFC 2034, October 1996.
[16] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies",
RFC 2045, November 1996.
[17] Moore, K., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Service
Extension for Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs)", RFC 3461,
January 2003.
Author's Address
Chris Newman
Sun Microsystems
1050 Lakes Drive
West Covina, CA 91790
US
EMail: chris.newman@sun.com
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